Does Ariel Helwani have a Turki in his back pocket?
In a rapidly collapsing media world, how is MMA's biggest reporter going to make his new project work?
A typical scene from MMA media relations in 2024. UFC CEO Dana White shares a tiny % of his gambling winnings with social media influencer Robbie Fox of Barstool Sports as a “wedding present.”
Who gets to tell the story of fight sports?
My former Bloody Elbow colleague Zane Simon had a piece yesterday that functions as a kind of pocket history of MMA media. From the exciting beginnings:
One of the more surprising … aspects of this industry is that MMA was the first ‘online’ sport.
…cagefighting boomed in the sphere of ‘new media’. Fans weren’t just trading tapes and renting UFC DVDs at Blockbuster, they were getting online to talk about it all.
The more they got to talking about it, the more they wanted to learn about it. Websites sprung up everywhere, seemingly overnight. The UFC encouraged their fighters to speak to the media openly and easily, and would give just about anyone with a laptop a press pass—meaning that access to a fast-growing world of combat sports was practically unprecedented.
To the state state of current affairs:
The gutting of media is complete, the jobs are gone, the war is won. In the couple years ahead of BE’s collapse, nobody asked me about working in MMA media anymore. Websites started cutting staff, and have steadily been closing left, right, and center. It’s not just a job nobody has, it’s a job nobody wants.
There are still a variety of people doing fun content on individual YouTube, Substack, and Patreon accounts out there. From technical breakdowns to critical analysis, editorial work, and even the rare bit of deep dive reporting. But it’s less present in the fan community than ever before. Replaced instead by influencer-led content, talking up rumors and social media beefs, or creating them when good enough quality can’t be found.
It’s not just MMA media. This is happening in a context of the collapse of news media as an entire industry.
Fast Company did a round-up of just a few of the recent casualties:
With so many losers, there has to be a winner, right? As it happens there is.
According to the Pew Research Center a majority of Americans now get their news via social media at least sometimes and while news web sites and apps remain the favorite source of news, social media is close and gaining fast:
There are several different pathways Americans use to get news on their digital devices. News websites or apps and search engines are the most common: About two-thirds of U.S. adults at least sometimes get news in each of these ways. A little more than half (54%) at least sometimes get news from social media, and 27% say the same about podcasts.
News websites or apps are also the most preferred source for news. About a quarter of U.S. adults (23%) say they prefer to get their news this way, compared with 18% who prefer social media, 12% who prefer search and 5% who prefer podcasts. The share of Americans who prefer social media has increased by 6 percentage points since 2023.
This means Ariel Helwani’s Uncrowned, in partnership with Yahoo Sports!, is fighting the social media tide and betting heavy on a news web site in an era where almost no one dares to launch such a beast.
After the paywall, we’ll talk more about Ariel’s new site and who might be helping him get it off the ground.
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